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| Lace Puff Sleeve Mini Sheath Dress // size 00 |
▪ Puff sleeves are making a comeback this fall, and Express has incorporated this detail into just about everything. I recently picked up the Lace Puff Sleeve Mini Sheath Dress (runs TTS) from above, which is perfect for a night on the town and is now 50% off.
▪ (A really great read; set aside at least 20 minutes for this.) Becoming a Steelworker Liberated Her. Then Her Job Moved to Mexico (New York Times): “Shannon, who’d derived her self-worth from the quality of the bearings she made, felt unsure about who she’d become. In two weeks’ time, her job would end. Her trip to Mexico would be canceled at the last minute, along with the $5,000 bonus she had been counting on. Training costs had gone over budget and needed to be reined in. More than 17 years on the factory floor came down to this: the Tocco, disconnected from water and electricity, waiting to be cut into pieces. Ricardo stood at a table nearby, swaddling the last of its coils in Bubble Wrap. Shannon didn’t offer to help. She walked outside to smoke. She didn’t want Ricardo to see her cry.”
▪ “Menocore” Is as Much About Wealth as It Is About Age (Racked): “A lot of the discussion surrounding this trend centers on the idea of comfort: not only wearing comfortable clothes, but wearing clothes that signify comfort with yourself. The Eileen Fisher woman has aged out of the male gaze without a backward glance, and she is totally at ease in her body … But when we look at the examples that keep being cited, a pattern emerges … These women are all white, thin, and, above all, rich. The message seems to be that growing old can be glorious, as long as you fit this metric. Only then are you allowed to relax. Because that’s what we really want, isn’t it? Leisure time? … She isn’t wondering if she’ll ever have dental insurance again, let alone retirement savings, or if the nation will survive long enough for her to reach retirement, or if the nap she took on Wednesday counts as a weekend … Menocore has emerged just in time to fill the gap between the traditional American Dream of upward mobility through hard work and the realities of surviving in a gig economy during volatile political times.”
▪ Everyone’s Mad at Google and Sundar Pichai Has to Fix It (Bloomberg): “Page and Brin, Google’s founders, could often come off as Vulcans—cold-hearted calculators who used an engineering mindset to approach the world’s problems. Pichai, though, has the empathy and
introspection of Captain Picard (and the beard of Commander Riker). In fact, his likability may be Google’s best weapon in its mounting political and business fights. ”
▪ The Danger Of President Pence (The New Yorker): “There have been other evangelical Christians in the White House, including Carter and George W. Bush, but Pence’s fundamentalism exceeds theirs. In 2002, he declared that ‘educators around America must teach evolution not as fact but as theory,’ alongside such theories as intelligent design, which argues that life on Earth is too complex to have emerged through random mutation … At the White House, Pence has been hosting a Bible-study group for Cabinet officers … In 2004, Drollinger, whose organization, Capitol Ministries, specializes in proselytizing to elected officials, stirred protests from female legislators in California, where he was then preaching, after he wrote, ‘Women with children at home, who either serve in public office, or are employed on the outside, pursue a path that contradicts God’s revealed design for them. It is a sin.”
▪ Nordstrom has marked down hundreds of new styles and further discounted existing sale styles. Select J. Crew styles that are still full-price elsewhere are now 40% off, including the J.Crew Ruffle Underlay Cardigan Sweater. Some picks: Wallis Lace Peplum Hem Dress, Gibson Tie Front Cozy Fleece Pullover, BP Mesh Inset Leggings, Blondo Olivia Knee High Boot, Vince Camuto Bell Sleeve Lace Top, Wit & Wisdom Ab-solution Stretch Twill Skinny Pants, Sole Society Vixen Bootie, Madewell Stripe Lace-Up Sleeve Shirtdress, Hinge Barris Block Heel Bootie, and Sarto by Franco Sarto Paivley Bootie.
▪ The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare (Fast Company): “I couldn’t know it then, but the outcome of that battle would influence the purchase decisions of many thousands, if not millions, of people seeking a good night’s sleep. It would also reveal just how thoroughly the internet and the businesses that thrived there had blurred the lines between product reviews and advertisements. All I’d wanted was a mattress, but what I got was a look at a little-known and hugely lucrative annex of e-commerce, one where the relationships can often get a little too comfy—until they’re not.”
▪ When Uncool Is Cool (1843 Magazine): “When the citadel of high fashion lifts its portcullis to embrace Birkenstocks, mom jeans and sweatshirts there must be something afoot. There is, of course: cork heels. ‘Go around and ask every top photographer and stylist, they are all wearing Birkenstock,’ says Oliver Reichert, the company’s new CEO. Why wouldn’t they? The shoes are desirable because they’re comfortable and they last. That’s catnip if you toil in fashion, a flashy, wasteful business in which precious private equity evaporates unless it generates steadily rising sales. Hence this season’s strategy: selling wearable items to an audience that might formerly have balked at their banality, but which is happily seduced by the facelift of fashion’s approval.”
▪ (Amy Cuddy is perhaps best known for her TED Talk on “power posing”.) When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy (The New York Times): “After 2012, questions of methodology started dominating every social-psychology conference, as did the topic of replications. Across disciplines, a basic scientific principle is that multiple teams should independently verify a result before it is accepted as true. But for the majority of social-psychology results, even the most influential ones, this hadn’t happened … For years, researchers treated journal articles, and their authors, with a genteel respect; even in the rare cases where a new study explicitly contradicted an old one, the community assumed that a lab error must account for the discrepancy. There was no incentive to replicate, in any case: Journals were largely not interested in studies that had already been done, and failed replications made people (maybe even your adviser) uncomfortable. But in the years after that Society of Personality and Social Psychology conference, a sense of urgency propelled a generation of researchers, most of them under 40, to re-examine the work of other, more established researchers. And politeness was no longer a priority … Some blog posts took on the impact of journal articles, as interested parties weighed in with an impromptu peer review.”
▪ Suburban Offices Are Cool Again (Bloomberg): “For millennials, the suburbs are the new city, and employers chasing young talent are starting to look at them anew … Fresh college graduates might be attracted to downtown bars and carless commutes, but these days, for older millennials starting families and taking out mortgages, a job in the suburbs has its own appeal … Many employers, hoping to attract millennials as they age, are trying to marry the best of urban and suburban life, choosing sites near public transit and walkable suburban main streets … None of this means the suburbs are going to supplant central cities as job hubs. After all, jobs traditionally based in cities—jobs in professional industries as well as the service jobs that support them—are growing faster than those typically based outside of them.”
▪ All coats are 25% off today at J. Crew with code DAY04. Some styles that I own and love are now on sale: Chateau Parka (see on me), Wintress Belted Puffer Coat (see on me), The 2007 Italian Stadium-Cloth Wool Toggle Coat (reviewed here), and Lady Day Coat (see on me).
▪ The Problem Is the Prices (Vox): “The health care prices in the United States are, in a word, outlandish. On average, an MRI in the United States costs $1,119. That same scan costs $503 in Switzerland and $215 in Australia … These are uniquely American stories, and they are the key to understanding our dysfunctional health care system … High prices are why medical debt remains a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and nowhere else … We rarely know what our bill will be when we enter a doctor’s office, or even when we leave. The prices aren’t listed on the wall or a website as they would be in most other places where consumers spend money.”
▪ The Hand Has Its Social Media Moment (The New York Times): “Second to the face, the hand is the most demonstrably human body part. Its opposable thumb allows it to wield tools, flash symbols and now, type out texts. It’s probably not a coincidence that the hand’s image has risen online just as mobile devices have taken over our social, work and creative lives. We’re living amid what the French philosopher Michel Serres has called the ‘Thumbelina Generation’: Instead of talking with our mouths, we’re creating vast and complicated visual and textual messages with finger taps and swipes. We shoot smartphone videos with the device in hand, thumb resting on the ‘record’ button, then turn around and watch the video in our hands. The hand is the driver of modern communication, and now it’s the star of it, too.”
▪ What It Takes to Get Accepted Into an Elite Apocalypse Bunker (New York Magazine): “But for those wanting membership in an underground community bunker built by Vivos Group — say, one of the 575 converted bomb-storage bunkers in South Dakota, or a shared, luxe, 80-person Cold War–era bunker in Indiana that will sustain life inside for at least a year — money isn’t enough. You must convince a selection committee that you’re a worthy entrant to the end-of-days Noah’s Ark.”
▪ MIT Wizards Invent Tech That Sees Around Corners (Wired): “Your eyes can’t see it, but there’s a lot going on in this penumbra: It’s a reflection—a real-time, low-res view of the scene around the corner. This happens outdoors, too, thanks to light from the sun. Train a camera on this spot and magnify the color, and you can start to pick out different-colored pixels that correspond to objects otherwise obscured by the wall … It’s so simple, you can capture the image with a cheap webcam.”
▪ Recently ordered: Storee Grommet Mini Skort, Banana Republic Italian Superloft Turtleneck Midi Sweater Dress, J. Crew Daphne Coat in Italian Tweed, J. Crew Convertible Sweater Cape, Ann Taylor Boiled Wool Turtleneck Sweater (50% off with code ALLTHEWAY), and Madewell Atlas Cocoon Coat.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
